Darwin 2026 Portfolio Review: 17 April 2026

Kamodo Dragon, Indonesia

It was another bullish week in US Equities with the SPX (S&P 500 Index) breaking strongly through the 7000 resistance level to new all-time highs:

In less than three weeks US Equities have now regained the ~10% loss generated in the previous two months and added close to another 2% to this gain. This doesn’t make a lot of sense in the current political and economic environment but that is what the charts are showing us. Where we go from here still remains to be seen but, for now, all our portfolios are probably looking pretty healthy.

US Equities gained ~4.5% over the past 5 days and were only beaten out by Emerging Market Equities (EEM) that topped out at ~5.1%. Commodities was the only losing major asset class in this period:

Since the Darwin Portfolio can draw from all these major asset classes in the quiver, let’s take a look at current recommendations:

where we see Momentum Buy recommendations for SCHF (Developed Market Equities), EEM (Emerging Market Equities), IAU (Gold) and VNQ (US Real Estate) and a Mean Reversion (MR) Buy signal for SPYM (US Equities). DJP (Commodities) and TLT (US Treasuries) are generating Sell recommendations.

Looking at the Buy recommendations for asset classes that were not held in the portfolio, SPYM was showing a Mean Reversion Buy recommendation:

with strong signals from both momentum (blue line) crossing above the 14-period Wilder MA (brown line) and Acceleration (green line) turning positive. Relative momentum is still in the negative zone and this is why this is classified as a Mean Reversion Buy rather than a Momentum Buy.

VNQ showed similar strength:

with positive momentum and acceleration but with momentum not yet having crossed above its 14-period MA. It is still too soon for me to assess whether the current algorithm should be changed to make this crossover a requirement for a confirmed Momentum Buy signal or just a less convincing potential, or partial/initial/suggested Buy Signal.

Either way, on Tuesday I used my discretion to enter partial (less than equal weight) positions in both SPYM and VNQ.

Since I was holding TLT going into the week, I did not have enough Cash available to meet my “equal weighting” goals without a lot of buying and selling, so let’s take a look at the momentum/acceleration graphs for this ETF:

where we can see strong sell signals in acceleration (green line), as it passed through the zero line and turned negative, and in momentum as it also crossed into negative territory and also crossed below it’s Wilder 14-period moving average. TLT was sold out of the portfolio on Thursday with a small loss and additional shares of SPYM and VNQ were purchased to get closer to the “equal weighting” goal. Trades during the week looked like this (red box):

and current holdings look like this:

…. much closer to equal weighting and close 100% invested.

And, of course, the performance of the portfolio to date:

where we can see that the Darwin Portfolio is performing well ahead of it’s benchmark AOA Fund Year-To-Date/since inception. The portfolio has not quite kept up with the benchmark over the past 3 weeks of bullish behaviour in the equity markets due to the fact that Commodities were held in the portfolio at the beginning of this period (and were responsible for the superior performance of the portfolio through the March draw-down period for equities). However, since Commodities were sold out of the portfolio on 8 April (~1 week ago) performance has matched it’s benchmark. To date I am very happy with the performance of the portfolio using the Momentum/Acceleration algorithm – it is showing a nice equity graph with good returns (50% IRR) and relatively low volatility (14%).

For the sake of completeness I will just mention that this portfolio was hedged (using Options) for downside risk protection on 12 May as the SPX broke below support at ~6800. As prices dropped to ~6300 (~-7%) the hedge increased in value to show ~$3,000 unrealized gain – with $7,000 possible at today’s (17 April) expiration should prices have stayed at those lows. With the recent recovery, and movement to new highs, it turns out that the hedge was not required and (after adjustments) the Options expired with a $314 gain. The objective of a hedge is not to make money but to protect a portfolio and reduce losses – just like home or auto insurance – but it is nice when one can squeeze a little money out of something that was not required 🙂